Tag Archives: hills

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California

Mustard Hills

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Mustard Hills - Evening light on the Mustard Hills, Death Valley National Park
Evening light on the Mustard Hills, Death Valley National Park

Mustard Hills. Death Valley National Park, California. January 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on the Mustard Hills, Death Valley National Park.

This photograph was made in a fairly accessible and “civilized” part of Death Valley not far from Furnace Creek and the old Harmony Borax Works. I have passed these hills many times, barely stopping aside from a time or two when I did a little loop drive while on my way to some other place. I did photograph in the area once before and even got one or two interesting photographs.

This time I decided to use one of the small, rounded hills as a overlook for shooting some distant shots of various portions of the Valley near sunset. By walking away from the highway, one can end up on top of any number of hills which happily show little evidence of being visited even though they are relatively accessible. I first did a bit of investigation to find the “right” hill, then hiked back to my car to pick up my camera, tripod, and bag of gear. Once I got back to the top of the hill, the shadows of the Panamint Range were already well across the main Valley and moving east quickly. I made a few photographs of the shaded valley and the lower slopes of the range, and then I turned my attention to the nearby yellow-tinted hills, looking for interesting near/far juxtapositions. I found this one literally seconds before the oncoming shadow of the Panamints arrived – in fact, it is beginning to diminish the foreground light in this shot, and in the one I made a few seconds later the light is greatly diminished.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Cook Bank Ruins, Rhyolite

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Cook Bank Ruins, Rhyolite - The ruins of the Cook Bank in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, with barren desert hills under a pre-sunrise sky.
The ruins of the Cook Bank in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, with barren desert hills under a pre-sunrise sky.

Cook Bank Ruins, Rhyolite. Rhyolite, Nevada. January 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The ruins of the Cook Bank in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, with barren desert hills under a pre-sunrise sky.

This was the closest to the winter solstice that I’ve visited Rhyolite, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by several things. First, the sun came up not only later, but also a bit further south along the horizon – and the light that would usually strike these ruins at sunrise was blocked for a while by a large hill that sits next to the town. Second, it was cold! Third, no one else was there at sunrise! This is a bit unusual since in the Death Valley high season (which arrives a bit later in the year), Rhyolite can be a pretty popular place… for a ghost town… in the middle of the desert… in Nevada. :-)

Because I have photographed here several times before and for the reasons mentioned above, I took a bit of a different approach to photographing the place this time. The winter light, some high clouds, and the different point along the horizon of the sun rise meant that the light was quite different from what I’ve occasionally had to work with in the past. At first I was a bit disappointed to realize that the direct dawn light was not going to strike the old Cook Bank and other nearby buildings. But when some clouds to the east obscured the direct light and high, thin overhead clouds begin to pick up color and fill in the shadows, I saw that other interesting lighting was going to make up for it. At the moment that I made this photograph, those clouds to the east (right) of my position beautifully softened what might otherwise have been some stark and harsh light on the pinnacles beyond the town. They also created an unusual and beautiful quality of light for a few moments – a reddish-pink quality from the light reflected from the clouds but with a few soft quality.

I decided to shoot from a distance with a long lens so as to control the position of the ruins against the background hills, and the longer focal length makes these hills more prominent than they would be if I shot the building with a shorter focal length from a closer position. This also allowed me to more carefully eliminate some distracting elements that invariably appear at old sites like this. (The first times I visited, access to most of the ruins was quite unimpeded. Now fences have been erected around some of them. Part of me regrets the loss of access, but the greater part of me understands that this will allow these buildings to be around longer so that more people will get to see them. I stayed behind the fences.) If you look around on the web a bit, you can find some wonderful old photographs of this town when it was a bustling place with thousands of residents, and when the Cook Bank was a very impressive and modern-for-the-time building.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Kit Fox Hills and Death Valley Buttes, Dusk

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Kit Fox Hills and Death Valley Buttes, Dusk - Post-sunset light on the Kit Fox Hills, Death Valley Buttes, and the slopes of the Grapevine Mountains, Death Valley National Park
Post-sunset light on the Kit Fox Hills, Death Valley Buttes, and the slopes of the Grapevine Mountains, Death Valley National Park

Kit Fox Hills and Death Valley Buttes, Dusk. Death Valley National Park, California. January 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Post-sunset light on the Kit Fox Hills, Death Valley Buttes, and the slopes of the Grapevine Mountains, Death Valley National Park.

The view of the eroded Kit Fox Hills and the larger masses of Death Valley Buttes beyond with ascending ridges and valleys of the Amargosa Range beyond is one that I’ve been working on for a few years now. During the day these formations are interesting, but in many ways not much more so than any of scores of other hills, washes, rocky ridges and so forth throughout the park and other desert areas. But sometimes the light does absolutely incredible things to these hills along the east side of the Valley.

I first saw this happen during a previous visit when evening clouds lit up in astonishing and almost surreal ways after the sun had set. As the sky to the west of Death Valley began to glow in the post-sunset light a wash of amazing and intense color began to fill the scene. I’m not even sure how to describe the color. Rose? Purple? Pink? Some combination of the three and more? At that time I was shooting from a small hill in a less visited portion of the Valley, and I I photographed a large “fan” along the base of huge mountains not far from Stovepipe Wells. While the colors in that photograph are, indeed, real, I have a heck of a time convincing people that this is the case. I end up doing so much explaining that I don’t show the photograph all that often!

This light is similar, though a bit less intense. The light was fading quickly at this point, and I only had a few moments of this particularly beautiful light, which might have been hard to see in person since it was getting late. I photographed this from yet another spot that it just a bit off the beaten track, though not far at all from some very popular areas. In fact, as I worked alone as the evening came on, I could swing my camera around and use my longest focal length to see hordes of people visiting and photographing another nearby feature, oblivious to the light in this spot far to their east.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Winter Tree

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Winter Tree - A winter-dormant tree is backlit by morning sun in the grasslands of the Calero Hills, California.
A winter-dormant tree is backlit by morning sun in the grasslands of the Calero Hills, California.

Winter Tree. Calero Hills, California. December 24, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A winter-dormant tree is backlit by morning sun in the grasslands of the Calero Hills, California.

This tree and I are old friends at this point. (If you were to snoop around enough at my web site you might find other photographs of the same tree.) It is at a local county park where I have hiked for many years, and it is not far from the parking lot at the park, sitting on the far side of a small pond and somewhat inaccessible. So I almost always pass it at the start of any hike there, and I have photographed it in just about any conditions that you can imagine: summer heat, morning, evening, fog…

I hadn’t been there for a while, but I managed to find time for a short hike on Christmas Eve day this year. The trail approaches the small pond near the tree by ascending up a very shallow valley. There are thick reeds growing around the pond, and often an egret can be found at the lake. With that possibility in mind, I usually approach the pond slowly and quietly and often with my long lens already on the camera. I did so on this day… but no egret! The water level was very low after a fall season with almost no rain, so there were few birds there at all. But at just about the time I arrived the sun was beginning to peak over a nearby hill and it was back-lighting this tree against the still shaded grass-covered hillside beyond.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.